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Sábesdiker Losn in Yiddish: A Problem of Linguistic

Affinity

Uriel Weinreich

To cite this article: Uriel Weinreich (1952) Sábesdiker Losn in Yiddish: A Problem of Linguistic
Affinity, WORD, 8:4, 360-377, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1952.11659447

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 SABESDIKER LOSN IN YIDDISH: A PROBLEM OF
LINGUISTIC AFFINITY*
U RIEL WEINREICH

They said to him, "Say Shibboleth," and he said "Sib-

boleth," for he could not pronounce it right; then they
seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan.-
Judges 12:6.

1. BILINGUAL DIALECTOLOGY APPLIED TO YIDDISH

1.1. One of the most attractive domains of diachronic linguistics is the study
of dialectological developments in consistently bilingual speech communities.
"The basic problem ... in connection with bilingualism," to quote Andre Mar-
tinet/ "is how far two structures in contact can be maintained intact, and to
what extent they will influence and modify each other." The dialectology of
bilingual speech communities furnishes ample illustrations of a basic structure
here maintaining itself, there being modified through language contact.
1.2. For most languages, territorial overlappings with other speech territories
are marginal phenomena restricted to border zones. 2 The case of Yiddish is one
of the rare instances in which the viewpoint of bilingual dialectology can be
applied to vast areas. At the time of its maximum spread, around the middle of
the eighteenth century, the Yiddish speech area stretched from Amsterdam to
Kiev and from Riga to Bucharest. 3 It overlapped or touched the language areas
of Dutch, northeastern French, German in many varieties, Polish, Czech,
Slovak, Hungarian, Rumanian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian, Lithuanian,
and Lettish-not to speak of the Yiddish language colonies in southern and
western Europe and in Palestine. In all these regions, Yiddish naturally was
exposed to outside influences, just as it left its traces on the coterritoriallan-
guages; but on the whole this culture community, known as the Ashkenazic
branch of Jewry, displayed a remarkable degree of inner cohesion and uni-
formity. Two Ashkenazic Jews hailing from as far apart as Brest-Litovsk and
Metz were linguistically and culturally more alike than, say, the Jews of Alsace-
Lorraine and those of Bordeaux, since the Bordeaux Jews belonged to the
Sephardic group.
When the Jews of Germany began dropping Yiddish and adopting German in
the course of the eighteenth century, the center of gravity of Yiddish-speaking
*This paper was read in abridged form at the twenty-seventh annual meeting of the
Linguistic Society of America, Cambridge (Mass.), December 28, 1952.
1
"Diffusion of Languages and Structural Linguistics," Romance Philology 6.5-13
(1952/53), p. 7.
2 Cf., for instance, Walther Mitzka's dialectological survey of a German-Polish bilingual

strip in his Grundziige nordostdeutscher Sprachgeschichte, Halle/S., Niemeyer, 1937, pp.

89-91.
3 Geographic names are cited in their English forms, if such exist, or in the languages of

the appropriate countries according to the pre-1939 map. Yiddish place names are omitted,
although they represent an interesting subject of study in themselves.
s56 360
 "sABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 361

Jewry had already shifted to Eastern Europe. In our own day, the large majority
of European Jews-six million in number-were murdered by the Germans
in World War II, and the survivors, if they have not emigrated or been other-
wise dislocated, are cut off from us by the Iron Curtain. But in the great centers
of Jewish immigration in the Americas and in Israel, as well as in Australia and
South Africa, there are living representatives from practically every locality
where Yiddish was spoken in 1939, while remnants of so-called western Yiddish4
can still be heard in situ in Alsace and in Switzerland. It is therefore possible
to supplement the data of pre-war Yiddish dialectology with fresh material from
informants. That is why all descriptive statements in this paper are given in the
present tense.
When we compare Yiddish and non-Yiddish dialectal developments in any
part of the vast European area of overlap, we find cases of both congruence and
equally interesting non-congruence in structure. It can be shown, for example,
that the dialects of Yiddish possessing an obligatory distinction between non-
perfective and perfective aspects of the verb (e.g. 8rajbn "'on-8rajbn5 'to write')
coincide with the Slavic area, while in western Yiddish, which matured in a
relatively aspectless German environment, the distinction is absent or non-
obligatory. Sometimes the congruence is only a partial one. For example, the
northeastern 1 dialect of Yiddish has adopted the coterritorial Slavic system of
sandhi, while the central dialects of Yiddish in Poland have not done so, pre-
serving instead an older system reminiscent of German. 6 In Slavic, an isogloss for
the verb stem 'to torment', running north and south, divides a mec- from a
muc- area. This stem has been adopted by Yiddish, but subjected to independent
phonological treatment, with the result that a Yiddish isogloss between mue-
and mil- (or myc-) crosses the Slavic one at right angles, and there is congruence
of form only in one of the four quadrants. In some respects, it must be added,
Yiddish manifests complete non-congruence with the Slavic or Baltic coter-
ritorial languages. Thus, phonemic vowel length has disappeared from Yiddish
on Lithuanian territory, but has been preserved in central Polish territory. 7
4 On the classification of Yiddish dialects, see Max Weinreich, "Yidish," in Algemeyne

yidishe entsiklopedye, supplementary volume Yidn B, pp. 23-90; p. 69.

6 Yiddish, German, and Slavic forms are cited in the text in a uniform transcription in

which c indicates [ts], j stands for consonantal i, y for a high back or mid unrounded vowel,
x for [x]; 'indicaY,s palatalization of the preceding consonant, · stands for vowel length,
- for nasality, and non-penultimate stress is marked by an acute accent on the vowel.
The sign "'represents opposition. Unless otherwise specified, Yiddish examples are cited
in their Standard Yiddish form. In the bibliographic references, Yiddish titles are trans-
literated according to the system of the Yiddish Scientific Institute-Yivo, while Russian
and Belorussian titles follow the system of The American Slavic and East European Re-
view.
6 This was discovered by T. Gutman [s], "Di konsonantn -asimilatsye in zats, '' Filologishe

shrijtn [fun Yivo] 2.107-10 (1927). The East Slavic-East Polish sandhi system consists of
the voicing or unvoicing of final consonants according to the voicedness, if phonemically
relevant, of the initial consonant of the following word.
7 Mordkhe Veynger, Yidishe dialektologye, Minsk, 1929, pp. 57£. Roman Jakobson, in

his trailblazing paper on language affinities ("Sur la theorie des affi..nit6s phonologiques
s57
 362 URIEL WEINREICH

Congruence can be caused by local "contagion" between coterritorial lan-

guages through bilingualism and extended by the concomitant diffusion of a
trait in the two conterminous language areas. It may also be distorted into
partial non-congruence by the migration of speakers or by a disjunctive dif-
fusion of the trait. All these factors must be considered in a causal investigation
of congruence.
2. SA.BESDIKER LosN
One of the most intriguing instances of non-congruence involves a peculiar
sound feature of the northeastern dialect of Yiddish: the confusion of the hushing
series of phonemes (8, z,
C) with the hissing phonemes (s, z, c), which are dis-
tinguished in all other dialects. 8 The exact manner of rendition of the single set
varies locally,9 but nowhere in this area is there an opposition of two series in
Yiddish. This dialect feature has come to be known as sdbesdiker losn 'soleinn
speech' (literally 'Sabbath language'), a phrase which in general Yiddish10 is
sdbesdiker losn, with two s's and an s. The mispronunciation of it immediately
identifies those who are affiicted with the trait; to them the term litvak is com-
monly applied. 11
The approximate limits of sdbesdiker losn are indicated on Map 1, where
certain similar features in modern Slavic dialects (see §3) have also been plotted.
It is evident that sdbesdiker losn in Yiddish is hardly congruent in area with any
similar dialectological phenomenon in any of the coterritorial languages (in
this case, Lithuanian and Belorussian). The question , therefore arises whether
entre les langues," Actes du IVeme Congres international de lingui.stes [1936), Copenhagen,
1938; reprinted as an appendix toN. S. Troubetzkoy, Principes de phonologie, Paris, Kling-
sieck, 1949, pp. 351-65), showed (p. 361) that Yiddish also acquired from its Slavic environ-
ment a distinction between palatal and non-palatal consonants (e.g. mol 'paint!' ,...., mot
'moth'; nit 'not',...., nit 'brownness of bread or cake crust'). However, the exact phonetic
facts of the case remain to be correlated areally with the far from uniform situation in the
Slavic languages themselves.
8 Cf. Judah A. Joffe, "Der slavisher element in yidish," Pinkes [fun Amopteyl fun Yivo)

1/2.235-56,296-312 (1927 /28), p. 298. The combinations [dz) and [dZ], which occur in Yiddish
but rarely, are here analyzed as phoneme clusters. They are, of course, subject to the same
confusion: general Yiddish blondzen 'to have lost one's way' ,...., undzer 'our'; sabesdiker
losn: blondzen, undzer.
9 In Lithuania, the single set was clearly hushing, or intermediate between 8 and s,

with varying degrees of palatality. This can be heard on the dialect records made by
Beatrice S. Weinreich in 1948 for the Yiddish Scientific Institute-Yivo in New York
(cf. especially Records Li 1-9, Le 1-2, Rus12, 16, P 3, 7, 46, 59, 63, 64, 66, 74, 81, 87, 107).
In northern Belorussia, the single set appears to have had hushing variants before some
vowels and hissing variants elsewhere, e.g. zax = [zax], but zibn = [z'ibm]; see Leyzer
Vilenkin, Yidisher shprakhatlasfun Sovetn-farband, Minsk, 1931, maps 67, 68, 72.
10 This ad-hoc term is used in the present paper to designate varieties of East European

Yiddish not affected by sabesdiker losn, i.e. possessing the opposition between hissing and
hushing consonants.
11 Litvak, though obviously cognate with Lite (the geographical name meaning Lith-

uania, in the historical sense), actually denotes a Jew from the northeast of the Yiddish
language territory. A gentile Lithuanian is never a litvak, but a litviner.
s58
 "sABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 363

the Yiddish peculiarity is the result of internal developments of the language,

and its location in Eastern Europe just a matter of chance, or whether it can be

Map. 1. AREAS OF SIBILANT DISTURBANCE IN EASTERN EUROPE

AROUND 193011

1-Russian and Belorussian c6kanje (confusion of hissing and hushing affricates); 2-

Yiddish sabesdiker losn (total confusion of hissing and hushing phonemes); 3-Polish
mazurzenie (confusion of non-palatal hissing and old hushing phonemes); X -traces of
possibly total confusion of hissing and hushing phonemes in Belorussian. Heavy line repre-
sents approximate border of Yiddish language territory.

explained by earlier contact with similar phenomena of the coterritorial lan-

guages. This essAy intends to show the way in which the problem can be ap-
proached and the implications that are involved.
12 Language borders (except Yiddish) according to map in A. Meillet, Les langues dans

l'Europe nouvelle, Paris, Payot, 1928; eastern border of Belorussian corrected according
toR. I. Avanesov, OCerki russkoj dialektologii I, Moscow, 1949 (map of East Slavic dialects);
Yiddish language borders in the east are the outer limits of the pre-1914 Pale of Settlement
s59
364 URIEL WEINREICH

3. HYPOTHESIS OF INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT

3.1. The first hypothesis regarding the origin of the Yiddish phenomenon to
be examined here is the following: The dialect affected by sdbesdiker losn repre-
sents a form of Yiddish in which, in contrast to the other Yiddish dialects, the
opposition between hissing and hushing consonants never developed. In other
words, the hissing"' hushing opposition encountered in general Yiddish is
an innovation which the northeastern dialect never shared.
3.2. In order to test this hypothesis, it is necessary to trace the development
of the hissing"' hushing opposition in general Yiddish. Now, Yiddish vocabulary,
as is well known, is derived from three principal sources: Germanic (mostly
High German dialects), Slavic, and Semitic (for the most part, rabbinical
Hebrew-Aramaic). Every one of the phonemes defined by the opposition in
question (s, 8; z, z; c, C) occurs in all components of the vocabulary, except that
z c
and did not originally occur in stems of Semitic origin.I3 It might be asked,
accordingly, whether this opposition was present in all stages of the language or
whether it came into being as a result of the fusion of the lexical components.
Let us recall that Yiddish originated when a group of Jews moved from
Romance language territories into the middle Rhine basin and shifted from
Loaz 14 to the local German of the period. 15 Because the process in all probability
lasted for several centuries 16-the time was around 1000 A. D.-and took place
in a part of Germany which was already dialectally differentiated, it is impos-
sible, at the present stage of our knowledge, to reconstruct with precision the
phonemic system or systems of earliest Yiddish. At first, the sounds of Yiddish
may have been formed through the mingling of Loaz and medieval German

(Jewish Encyclopedia, New York, Funk and Wagnall, 1905, X, p. 531). Polish mazurzenie
after Kazimierz Nitsch, "Dialekty iSlzyka polskiego," in T. Benni et al., Gramatyka jl}zyka
polskiego, Cracow, 1923, pp. 49lff. (and map); Belorussian c6kanje after P. Buzuk, Sproba
lingvistycnaje geografii Belarusi, Minsk, 1928, map 8; Russian c6kanje roughly after Avane-
sov's map and S. A. Koporskij, "Cokanje v kalininskoj oblasti," Materialy i issledovanija
po russkoj dialektologii 3.152-232 (1949). Traces of total sibilant confusion in Belorussian
according to sources listed in footnotes 51 and 52. Sabesdiker losn according to sources
listed in footnote 68.
13 Examples: GERMANIC-oisn 'to know', visn 'to wipe'; jerz (recent) 'line of verse',

hid 'millet'; necn 'to wet', kveen 'to squeeze'; SLAvic--kose 'scythe', pase 'pasture'; zaveruxe
'snowstorm', zabe 'frog'; celnik 'haberdashery', cepen 'to touch'; SEMITIC-oser '(ritually)
forbidden', koser '(ritually) pure (food)'; zokn 'old man'; core 'trouble'. Secondary develop-
ments resulting from assimilations and contractions produced forms of ultimately Semitic
origin like xezbn < xesbn 'account', hazgoxe < hasgoxe 'supervision', mircem < mircesem
< im jirce hasem 'God willing'.
14 Loaz may be roughly described as Oldest Judeo-French with a sprinkling of Oldest
Judeo-Italian; cf. Max Weinreich, "Yidishkayt and Yiddish: on the Impact of Religion on
Language in Ashkenazic Jewry," Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume, New York, 1953,
p. 488.
1& For further details, see the paper by M. Weinreich cited in footnote 4, pp. 30f.

1a Cf. S. Birnbaum, "The Age of the Yiddish Language," Transactions of the Philological
Society 1939, pp. 31-43; pp. 42f.
s60
 "SABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 365

phonemics; at least in the vocabulary the Loaz heritage in Yiddish was sub-
stantial and survives, in part, to this day.I 7 In the Jews' eastward migrations set
in motion by the massacres of the Crusades, Yiddish was exposed to variegated
dialect influences in other parts of Germany. Beginning with the thirteenth
century, at the latest, Yiddish speakers began settling in Slavic lands, and from
then on some branches of the language developed out of contact with German
dialects. All the while, Semitic elements from the liturgy and rabbinical liter-
ature and Slavic elements from the surrounding vernaculars continued to be
added to the Yiddish vocabulary.
Theoretically, then, one could imagine that the type of Yiddish brought to
Slavic areas had only a single series of sibilants, and that the hissing,..._, hushing
opposition in general Yiddish was established as a result of Slavic influence; 18 but
if this had been the case, the distribution of hissing and hushing phonemes in
general Yiddish would bear no relation to that of German; there would be no
reason why *viSn 'to wipe' should have become visn, but *viSn 'to know' >
visn. As a matter of fact, the distribution of sibilants in the Germanic component
of Yiddish and that in German dialects are almost perfectly correlated. It must
therefore be concluded, even without recourse to written documents, that in
general Yiddish the distinction between hissing and hushing phonemes goes
back to a period when the contact with the German vernaculars had not yet
been severed. The origin of the opposition, consequently, must be found on
German ground.
3.3. It may be added parenthetically that the phonemic shape of Hebrew-
Aramaic elements added to the basic Germanic stock of Yiddish has been based
for many centuries on a reading tradition according to which sin (rV) was read
as 8, but sin (W), samek (0), and tav (n) were all read as s.I9 The early history
of this reading tradition and its relation to the pre-Yiddish tradition in Loaz
are still obscure, 20 but it is probably safe to say that it was applied with great
consistency in general Yiddish21 for the major part of its history. Slavic ele-
ments, on the other hand, were added to the vocabulary of general Yiddish
with hissing or hushing phonemes distributed, on the whole, as in the stock
17 E.g. benen 'to bless', vire 'ruler', lejenen 'to read'.
18 The process is not unknown in Yiddish. It was Slavic borrowing, for instance, that
established the phonemic distinctions between palatal[, n and alveolar l, n in the language
(cf. the examples in footnote 7). On the establishment of new phonemic distinctions as a
result of lexical borrowing, see Uriel Weinreich, La;nguages in Contact, New York, 1953,
p. 27.
19 The few exceptions, e.g. sames 'beadle' < sammas or (dialectal) metustes 'vague' <

metustas, can be explained as dissimilations in Yiddish.

20 The Jews of northern France, i.e. the speakers of Loaz, allegedly read sin like tav

( = [11]?), according to the Provenc;al Hebrew grammarian and exegete David Qimbi (116Q-
1235) in his commentary on the shibboleth passage of Judges; cf. Meyer Lambert, "Notes
exegetiques," Revue des etudes juives 29.146£. (1904).
21 In sabesdiker losn, the letter sin is identified, like the three others, with s; however,

different degrees of effort to distinguish hissing and hushing sounds in the liturgy must be
counted with.
s61
366 URIEL WEINREICH

languages. 22 Clearly, then, the hissing"' hushing opposition in Yiddish orig-

inally was not dependent on the Slavic, and certainly not on the Semitic,
component of the vocabulary. 23
In view of these historical and structural facts, it is not unjustified to base the
diachronic analysis of the opposition on the Germanic component of Yiddish.
3.4. We may assume that around the year 1000, the so-called "High German
sound shift" had already reached its present-day stage24 in those parts of the
Rhine basin (Mayence, Worms, etc.) where Yiddish was born. 25 Accordingly,
the sibilant section of the consonantal system contained at least the following
phonemes:
c ~-

Here, c represents the derivative of tt (word-initially and after sonants, of t).

The phoneme §, which is the derivative of non-initial t, is distinguished from a
sibilant of a different quality (derived from older s), which, in turn, is designated
here as ~;this sibilant also occurred in gemination (~§) in medial and final posi-
tion.26 According to standard doctrine, this§ ( <s) had "an 8-like sound, or one
similar to Polish 8," but Joos27 has more convincingly identified its quality as
"apical," distinct from the "dorsal" § ( <t).
Another development must be mentioned: the evolution of 8 from older sk.
This change is considered to have taken place in German between the ninth
and twelfth centuries,28 or even to have been completed (in the Bavaro-Austrian
area, at least) by the middle of the eleventh century .29 The intermediate stages of
the change are not known for certain, although the evidence suggests that in
22 In addition, Polish palatal 8, z, c, dz were as a rule treated as hushing; cf. Polish §edlce

(place name) > Yiddish 8edlec, xoc 'although' > xoe, and so on. In sabesdiker losn, Slavic
hissing and hushing sounds are treated alike. The precise development of the oldest Slavisms
in Yiddish, like zejde ( < Old Czech dedf), remains to be explored.
23 This applies to the phonemic structure as a whole. On the other hand, in certain

positions, the yield of the opposition was greatly increased by the addition of Slavic and
Semitic vocabulary: thus, word-initially, s- and z- occur frequently, but only in non-
Germanic stems.
•• This stage differs, in East European Yiddish and in certain present-day dialects of
German, from the "classical" New High German form in that initial p has become! (rather
than pf), while medial and final pp remain largely unshifted: funt 'pound', but epl 'apple',
top 'pot'.
26 "At the Rhine, the majority of shifted forms already lay [as far north as] the ap-

proaches of Cologne around the year 1000" (Adolf Bach, Deutsche Mundartforschung,
Heidelberg, Winter, 21950, p. 209). See also Theodor Frings, Grundlegung einer Geschichte
der deutschen Sprache, Halle/S., Niemeyer, 11948, p. 26.
26 The sounds designated here as 1J and § were distinguished in the script respectively as

s and z (or a 3-type graph).

27 Martin Joos, "The Medieval Sibilants," Language 28.222-31 (1952), pp. 224, 226.

28 Ernst Schwarz, Die germanischen Reibelaute s, f, ch im Deutschen (=Schriften der

Deutschen wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft in Reichenberg 1), Reichenberg, 1926, pp. 22ff.

29 Anton Mayer, "Zum Alter des tlbergangs von sk zu 8," Beitriige zur Geschichte der

deutschen Sprache und Literatur 53.286--90 (1929).

s62
 "SABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 367

western Germany the process took the form sk > sx ( > sx) > s, 30 while
in southeastern Germany the course was sk > sk > 8. 31 The details of the
process are not without significance for the history even of general Yiddish, 32
but there is no reason why we cannot postulate, for the medieval ancestor of
general Yiddish, a completed consonant system to which s had already been
added, as follows: 33

In the ensuing development of general Yiddish, c remained a voiceless apical

affricate, while s remained a voiceless hushing sibilant. As to § and ~. their
evolution may be reconstructed in the following way:
(1) The opposition § ,...., ~. which had been in effect medially and finally
(except after r), was reinterpreted.
(a) The dorsal sibilant, §, became voiceless and hissing s (v~er35 > vaser
'water', n'U§ > nus 'nut') ;36
(b) the apical sibilant, ~. became voiced and hissing z (i·~en31 > ajzn
'iron', hu·~ > hojz 'house', hal~> halz [>haldz] 'throat');
(c) in gemination, ~~ became merged with the voiceless and hushing s(me§§e
> mes 'brass' like dresen > dresn 'to thresh'; ku~~ > kus 'kiss'; kir?§(e) >
kars 'cherry').
30 Cf., for example, Hermann Paul, Deutsche Grammatik, Halle/S., Niemeyer, 1916, I,
§220.
31 Schwarz, op. cit., p. 24.
32 Their possible role in the development of sabesdiker losn is mentioned in §3.5. It would
be interesting, moreover, to determine how Hebrew Sin was read before sk had changed to 8.
33 The combination [c] is even rarer in the Germanic component of Yiddish than in

German itself (cf. Paul, op. cit., §223), despite its occurrence in several words inherited
from Loaz (e.g. bencn 'to bless', colnt < ca-let 'Sabbath dish cooked on Friday and kept
warm overnight in a closed oven'). Most of the occurrences of [c] involve special condi-
tions, such as a morpheme boundary (e.g. heneke 'glove' < hant-suox), affrication after
sonants (e.g. mene <mens 'human being'), or contractions (e.g. tajc 'meaning, explanation'
< tu·ts 'German' < diutisk). For the earlier stages of Yiddish, prior to the addition of the
Slavic words with their abundant c's, it is therefore preferable to consider [c] a phoneme
cluster, ts, as does Troubetzkoy (op. cit., p. 74) for New High German.
34 From the general linguistic point of view, a phonemic system with three series of

sibilants of the type which existed in medieval German and Yiddish (and, incidentally,
also in some Sorbian dialects) is quite unusual; cf. Troubetzkoy, op. cit., p. 143. It might be
worth examining the possibility that the excessively delicate balance of the oppositions
was itself a contributing cause of the subsequent rearrangements; cf. Andre Martinet,
"Function, Structure, and Sound Change," Word 8.1-32 (1952), on the principles involved.
36 After short vowels, § had been spelled -33-, but no opposition between -§- and -§§-

seems to have existed.

36 Sporadically,-§ became -z, e.g. 8pie§ > spiz 'spear'; cf. Veynger, op. cit., p. 87.

a7 The reader will note that with reference to some vowels, "classical" Middle High
German forms have been chosen as hypothetical points of departure. In spite of the in-
consistency of this procedure, it had to be followed because numerous medieval Yiddish
texts have not yet been sufficiently studied phonemically.
s63
368 URIEL WEINREICH

(2) In positions where it had not been opposed to ~. the phoneme ~ de-
veloped variously:
(a) initial prevocalic ~ became voiced and hissing z (~iben > zibn 'seven');
(b) initial preconsonantal ~ became voiceless and hushing 8 (~mo:l > smol
'narrow');
(c) medial ~ before voiceless consonants became voiceless and hissing s (mi~t
> mist 'dung') ; but
(d) ~ after r (unless followed by a voiceless consonant, in which case it be-
haved like a geminate) became z (hir~e > hiri 'millet', kur~(e)na:re > kirzner
'fur cap maker'; but er~t > erst 'first'). 38
In other words, the function of the opposition of apicality ,...., dorsality was
taken over by the opposition of voice, while the function of gemination was
taken over, after r, by the voice opposition: I kir~~e,...., hir~e I > I kars,...., hirz I ,
and elsewhere by a complex opposition of hissing-voiced ,...., hushing-voiceless:
i ·~en ,...., me~~e I > I ajzn ,...., mes I . This is reformulated in the table below.
DEVELOPMENT OF SIBILANT OPPOSITIONS IN GENERAL YIDDISH

Initial Non-Initial

Not After r
Prevocalic Preconson. After r
Pre- Prevocalic or Final
conson.
--
M edieval Yiddish c,....,l!,....,B c ............... .;& c ..... I! ....... '!~......, 8 C"'l! c......,~......,l!~ ....... s......,~

Germanic
Component c ....... z,....,8 c ~. c ....... z ~
8 .~. c~z ~
ii ~

•
M odern Yiddish
Total Vocabu-
lary Full set of oppositions: a ,...., 3 ....... z ......, Z ....... c ,....., C in all positions"

38 For parallels of this development in Bavarian dialects of German, see Primus Lessiak

in Anzeiger fur deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 32.133f. (1908). Incidentally, the
multiple phonemic split-up of 11 was doubtless due to the low or non-existent functional
yield of the opposition§"' 11"' 8 in most positions. Only in the subsequent development of
Yiddish did the derivatives of ~ enter into well burdened oppositions as a result of the addi-
tion of Semitic and Slavic elements (for examples, see footnote 40). Individual deviants such
aspar86jn 'person'< per~o·n(e), nisn 'to sneeze' (M. H. G. nieljen), or dejze 'kneading trough',
which Veynger (op. cit., p. 86) derives from do·lje (cf. J. and W. Grimm, Deutsches Worter-
buch, s. v. Dose), need special explanations.
39 Before r, only 8 seems to have occurred (e.g. 8ri·ben 'to write'); before other con-

sonants, only 11 (e.g. ~Jla·fen 'to sleep', ljma·l 'narrow', etc.).

40 The distribution has been completed by the addition of vocabulary of Semitic and

Slavic origin. Examples (G = Germanic, H = Semitic, S = Slavic): (1) H sam 'poison',

H 8abes 'Saturday', G zamd 'sand', S zabe 'frog', G capn 'bung', S cate 'flock'; (2) H svive
'environment', G 8vicn 'to sweat', H zvuln 'Zebulun', S zvir 'gravel', G cvogn 'to wash (hair)',
S cvok 'nail'; (3) H girse 'version', G kar8 'cherry', G (recent) ferz 'line of verse', G hid
'millet', G hare 'heart', S burcen 'to growl'; (4) G mist 'dung', S rest 'remainder', S brazg
'thud', H xezbn 'account', G icter 'now', S poetn 'rumors'; (5) Gnus 'nut', G ves 'wash', G
noz 'nose', S az 'as much as', G kac 'cat', G pal; 'slap'. In the Semitic component of the
Sudeten dialect of Yiddish, s- did not normally occur even in modern times (cf. Franz
Beranek, "Yidish in Tshekhoslovakay," Yivo-Bleter 9.63-75 [1936], p. 67); whether this
s64
 "SABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 369

3.5. We may now return to the hypothesis proposed in §3.1. For the reasons
advanced in §3.3, this hypothesis hinges on the fate of the hissing'""'"' hushing
opposition in the Germanic component of Yiddish. As is evident from the table
above, the hissing'""'"' hushing opposition in the Germanic component of modern
Yiddish is truly operative only in non-initial prevocalic and final position. If we
were now to suppose that 8dbe8diker losn branched off from general Yiddish as
early as in the medieval period, then it must have resulted from the non-op-
position of the ancestors of 8 and 8 in these positions, viz.,§§, s, and§; and since
§§ could easily have gone the way of hissing consonants without serious disturb-
ance to the system, 41 8dbe8diker losn would depend mainly on the fusion of s
and§.; or, if it originated much before the twelfth century, it must stem from the
fusion of 8k and §. 42
Is it likely that such a fusion took place and, consequently, that 8dhe8diker
losn is an internal development of Yiddish? It is not possible at the present state
of research to accept such a hypothesis. All that can be said at present, before a
sufficient number of old Yiddish texts is reexamined phonemically, is that the
view cannot be rejected either. 43 The fusion would not at all be difficult to
visualize if it took place at that intermediate stage when the crucial sounds were
distinguished as <§.> and 8X; the merger might then have taken place by the
process 8X > 8h > 8.
4. HYPOTHESIS OF SLAVIC INFLUENCE

4.1. In contrast to the theory that 8dbe8diker losn represents an internal

development of Yiddish fortuitously located in Eastern Europe, a different

restriction on distribution reflects an older stage of general Yiddish remains to be investL

gated.
41 This was the case, for example, in the dialects underlying New High German: kiflflen >

kisen 'pillow'.
42 A number of earlier linguists, because they considered the problem non-structurally,
were led astray into futile disputations by the "quasi-hushing" articulation of fl. It should
be clear from the above discussion that fl is not really relevant to the problem. Arguments
based on the quality of this phoneme were used both by defenders of the hypothesis of the
internal development of sabesdiker losn, like Mordkhe Veynger ("Vegn yidishe dialektn,"
Tsaytshrift far yidisher geshikhte, ... shprakh-visnshaft un etnografye [Minsk] 1.181-208
[1926], p. 204) or Viktor Zirmunskij ("0 nekotorykh voprosakh jevrejskoj dialektografii,"
Jazyk i my8lenie 9.135-45 [1940]; partial Yiddish translation in Yivo-Bleter 19.243-9 [1942],
p. 247) and by opponents of the hypothesis, like Nokhem Shtif ("M. Veyngers dialekto-
logishe arbetn," Di yidishe shprakh [Kiev], nos.14, 15 [1929], esp. pp. 6f. in no.15) or Noyekh
Prilutski (Review of Tsaytshrift 1 in Literarishe bleter [Warsaw], 1928, p. 562). Veynger, for
example, was criticized by Shtif for his parallels with a sk > sx > s development in Low
GermaR on the grounds that Yiddish-Low German affinities were unlikely. Actually,
neither the pros nor the cons of the argument are fully to the point, since the Low German
dialectal confusion is not between the ancestors of ~ and 8, but those of ~ and 8.
43 Much of the older documentary evidence is quite ambiguous. The Sin was widely used
in Yiddish to render both s and 8, even where a phonemic confusion is out of the question.
Systematic distinctions between Sin = 8 and samek = s begin to appear only in the six-
teenth century. Cf. Nokhem Shtif's study of 16th-century conditions, "Mikhael Adams
dray yidishe bikher," Filologishe shriften [fun Yivo] 2.135-68 (1928), esp. pp. 139-46.
s65
 370 URIEL WEINREICH

hypothesis has been advanced: The form of Yiddish brought to northeastern

Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries contained an oppo-
sition of hissing and hushing phonemes, but lost this opposition as a result of
interference from the coterritorial languages in the area. Let us examine the
facts bearing on this hypothesis.
4.2. Since a large part of the Yiddish area characterized by sdbesdiker losn
is coterritorial with Lithuanian, it has been suggested44 that the phenomenon in
Yiddish may be of Lithuanian origin. However, no hissing-hushing confusion is
known to exist in any Lithuanian dialect, 45 nor is there any evidence that it did
exist in the past. The possibility of Lithuanian influence may therefore be ex-
cluded.
4.3. The origin of the hissing-hushing confusion has also been sought in the
other language which is coterritorial with the area of sdbesdiker losn in Yiddish,
namely, Belorussian. N. Shtif, for example, 46 tried to relate the Yiddish feature
to Belorussian cokanje, a dialectal peculiarity consisting of the confusion of
c and c. On the face of it, his argument appears quite weak. First, it is difficult
to imagine that the collapse of the c "' c opposition, of rather light functional
yield in Yiddish, should of itself have caused the abandonment of the heavily
burdened correlative oppositions"' 8. Secondly, as Map 1 shows, the areas of
Belorussian cokanje and Yiddish sdbesdiker losn barely touch. Thirdly, the small
area of overlap constitutes the extreme periphery of the Yiddish language
territory, both geographically and culturally. It is hard to conceive of a local
speech feature spreading from these marginal outposts to the proud and pop-
ulous centers of Jewish culture in western Belorussia and Lithuania.
'
On the other hand, one point mentioned by Shtif, if it c.ould be substantiated
in the sense which he envisaged, might validate the hypothesis of the Belo-
russian origin of sdbesdiker losn. In former times, Shtif asserts, the confusion of
the affricates in Belorussian (i.e. cokanje) was accompanied by the total con-
fusion of all hissing and hushing phonemes; furthermore, this phenomenon ex-
tended further south, so that the area of overlap with Yiddish was then pre-
sumably much greater.
Ai3 a matter of fact, the total confusion of all hissing and hushing phonemes
44 Most recently by Yudl Mark in his comprehensive study, "Undzer litvisher yidish,"

in Lite, ed. M. Sudarsky et al., New York, 1951, I, pp. 429-72; p. 436.
46 There is no mention of a 8--s confusion in any of the standard works on Lithuanian

dialectology (e.g. Alfred Senn, Lithuanian Dialectology, Supplement 1 to The American

Slavic and East European Review, 1945; A. Salys, "Kelios postabas tarmiy istorijai,"
Archivum philologicum [Kaunas] 4.21-34 [1933]). The absence in Lithuanian of a confusion
of this type has been explicitly confirmed by Professor Senn in a communication to this
writer dated January 8, 1953. The affrication and depalatalization of soft dental stops
(t' > c, d' > dz)-a characteristic of the Lithuanian speech of the so-called Dzukai (cf.
Senn, op. cit., p. 38)-is a rather different phenomenon. For example, the dialect described
monographically by B. Larin ("Materialy po litovskoj dialektologii," Jazyk i literatura
1.93-170 [1926]) is typically Dzukish, but shows no signs of a hissing-hushing confusion
(p. 107).
48 N[okhem] Shtif, "Di dialektologishe ekspeditsye fun der katedre far yidisher kultur,"

Di yidishe shprakh (Kiev), no. 19 (1929), pp. 1-29; pp. 24f.

s66
 "SABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 371

has been recorded in certain northern, central, southern, and Siberian Russian
dialects,47 but how far south it extends, or ever extended, in the area which is
relevant to Yiddish is unfortunately not clear at all. 48 Its existence in the dialect
of Pskov is well documented for the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries,49 but this
location is too far north60 to constitute a possible source of the Yiddish confu-
sion. Traces of a possibly total confusion between hissing and hushing sounds
in modern Belorussian have been found further south at points marked X on
Map 1: in the Minsk, Mogilev, Bobrujsk, and Svisloc regions, 51 and around
Bielsk near Bialystok. 62 In many other parts of Belorussia, on the other hand,
hissing and hushing fricatives have been explicitly found in phonemic opposi-
tion.63 To complicate the problem further, even the recorded instances of hissing-
hushing confusion cannot be utilized uncritically; first, because their phonemic
status is uncertain, 64 and, secondly, because it is not quite safe to interpret the
47 Avanesov, op. cit., p. 212; A. Seliscev, "Sokanje i sokanje v slavjanskikh jazykakh,"

SZavia 10.718-41 (1931), p. 719.

48 As Avanesov puts it (Zoe. cit.), "we do not have sufficient or reliable sources to evaluate

the degree of diffusion of this phenomenon." See also Seliscev, Zoe. cit.
49 See, for example, Nikolaj Karinskij, Jazyk Pskova i jego oblasti v XV veke (=Zapiski

istoriko-fiZolog. fakuZ'teta Imper. sankt-peterbur(}IJkogo universiteta 93), St. Petersburg, 1909,

p. 178.
6°Karinskij assigns the hissing-hushing confusion to the North Russian, and not to

the Belorussian, "component" of the Pskov dialect. The northern affinities of the con-
fusion are accepted even by A. A. Sakhmatov in his criticism of Karinskij ("Neskol'ko
zametok ob jazyke pskovskikh pamjatnikov XIV-XV v.," reprint from ZurnaZ Ministerstva
narodnogo prosve8Cenija n.s. 22.105-77 [1909), p. 175).
61 I. Volk-Levonovic, "Jesce k voprosu o 'ljasskikh' certakh v belorusskoj fonetike,"

Slavia 9.500-23 (1930/1), pp. 511f. The Svisloc referred to in this study is apparently the
town on the Berezina north of Bobrujsk, not the place south of Grodno. Curiously enough,
the town name of Surd also occurs in the Bialystok area and at least twice in eastern
Belorussia (near Brjansk and near Vitebsk). The present writer is not aware of any attempt
to correlate these and other toponomastic correspondences with the phonemic affinities as
possible evidence of Slavic migrations.
62 Noted by E. R. Romanov (MateriaZy po etnografii grodnenskoj gubernii, Vilna, 1912,

II) for Gorodisk (Grodzisk) and Velikaja Corna; by Michal Federowski (Lud bialoruski na
Rusi Zitewskiej, Cracow, 1897, I, p. xii) for the Sok6lka and Bialystok regions (quoted after
Jiff Polivka, "Z malorusk~ dialektologie," Casopis pro modern! filologii 3.306-9 [1913]).
See also Ludwik Czarkowski, "Powiat bielski w gubernii grodzienskiej," Rocznik To-
warzystwa przyjaciol nauk w WiZnie 1.39-132 (1907), p. 74; Kazimierz Nitsch, op. cit., p.
425; G. 0. Vinokur, "Zametki po fonetike odnogo ukrainskogo govora," BjuZeten' Dialek-
toZogiceskogo sektora Instituta russkogo jazyka [Akademii Nauk SSSR]1.23-42 (1947).
63 Thus E. F. Karskij, Materialy dlja izueenija belorusskikh govorov IV ( = Sbornik Ot-

delenija russkogo jazyka i slovesnosti Imper. Akademii nauk 75, no. 5), St. Petersburg,
passim; idem, Materialy dlja izueenija malorusskikh govorov [etc.] II ( = Sbornik ... 75,
no. 6), passim; P. A. Rastorgujev, "K voprosu o lja8skikh certakh v belorusskoj fonetike,'!
Trudy Postojannoj kommissii po dialektologii russkogo jazyka 9.35-48 (1927), p. 44; Buzuk,
op. cit., p. 44.
64 It seems that in many cases the confusion affects only hushing and PALATALIZED
hissing consonants (e.g. 8 and s', but not 8 and s). If that is the case, it could not have
been the model for sabesdiker Zosn in Yiddish. The only work which deals with the problem
structurally, viz. Vinokur's (see footnote 52), shows that, though the old 8-series in the
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372 URIEL WEINREICH

sporadic present-day manifestations of the confusion as proof of a former general

confusion in Belorussian (later eliminated, presumably under Kiev influence). 66
The probability of a general confusion of hissing and hushing sounds in earlier
Belorussian is not made any greater by the theory of prehistoric Polish-Bela-
russian aflinity66 or the fact of subsequent Polish influence on Belorussian, 67
since the alleged existence of this confusion was itself cited as part of the evidence
for those affinities and influences. The cautious investigator of sdbesdiker losn
is forced to conclude that, pending additional field research in Slavic dialec-
tology, the Belorussian facts, even when utilized more fully than by Shtif, do
not yield a straightforward explanation of the origin of the Yiddish phenomenon.
Even if the confusion of hushing and (non-palatalized!) hissing phonemes could
be shown to have existed in central Belorussian between the fourteenth and
eighteenth centuries, when the area was being settled by Jews, there would still
remain the problem of how this feature was diffused within the Jewish language
community as far west as the Baltic Sea. Perhaps it could be shown that it was
in the southwest corner of Belorussia (around Bielak), which seems to have
served as the gateway for Jewish immigration in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries,68 and where the existence of the confusion in Belorussian seems to be
most reliably ascertained, that Yiddish was infected with the phenomenon. By
further migration, sdbesdiker losn might then have been carried to the north-
west, the north, and the northeast. There would be left the paradoxical fact that
in modern Yiddish, the old gateway area around Bielak is not included in the

Bielsk region had indeed been merged with the s-series, a new hushing (derived from the
old palatalized hissing) series has been evolved, so that hushing and hissing are again
opposed: tezat 'they lie'~ vozat 'they transport'.
66 This thesis is advanced, for example, by Volk-Levonovic (op. cit., pp. 517, 522) and

in a somewhat different context by Rastorgujev (op. cit., p. 44). But in the Bielsk area,
on the western fringe of Belorussia, the confusion is ascribed by all investigators to local
Polish influence. As for the Belorussian north, A. I. Sobolevskij (Russkij filologiceskij
vestnik 1886, no. 1) characterized the dialects just south of Pskov (Smolensk, Polock),
which are of much greater relevance to Yiddish than Pskov itself, as distinguishing hissing
and hushing phonemes in the late Middle Ages, when these sounds were confused in Pskov.
66 Advanced by A. A. Sakhmatov (cf., for example, his Vvedenie v kurs istorii russkogo
jazyka, Petrograd, 1916, I, pp. 55f., 105, llOf.) and refuted, in an apparently definitive
manner, by W. Porzezinski ("Rzekome pierwiastki lechickie w jyzykach wschodnio-
sJowianskich," Prace filologiczne 10.86-104 [1926]), P. A. Rastorgujev (op. cit.), and T.
Lehr-Splawinski ("Stosunki pokrewie:tistwa jyzyk6w ruskich," Rocznik slawistyczny 9.23-
72 [1930]).
67 Cf. E. F. Karskij, Belorussy, Warsaw, 1903, I, pp. 139-80; D. K. Zelenin, Velikorusskie

govory s neorganiceskim i neperekhodnym smjagceniem zadnenebnykh soglasnykh, St. Peters-

burg, 1913, p. 492.
68 The oldest records concerning the Jewish community of Bielsk date from 1487. Sur-

rounding Jewish settlements in the nearby towns of Mielnik, Ciechanowiec, Losica, and
Kamieniec Litewski go back to the first quarter of the sixteenth century, while most settle-
ments to the northeast are of somewhat more recent origin. See Istorija jevrejskogo naroda,
Moscow, Mir, 1914, XI, page opposite 112. Cf. also Mark Wischnitzer, "Di geshikhte fun
yidn in Lite fun mitl-elter biz der ershter velt-milkhome," Lite, ed. M. Sudarsky et al.,
New York, 1951, I, pp. 43-88; p. 62.
s68
 "sABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 373

territory of sabesdiker losn (see Map 2); but this could be due to secondary
leveling from the southwest (see §5.1).
It is evident that a great deal of Slavic and Yiddish research-both dialec-
tological and historical-is a necessary prerequisite for the final acceptance or
rejection of the Belorussian hypothesis.
4.4. A further Slavic phenomenon that deserves thoughtful consideration is
the Polish dialect trait of mazurzenie, defined as the merger of hushing and non-
palatal hissing phonemes.09 While the causes of this Polish development are in
dispute, 60 they are "prehistoric" from the Yiddish point of view; Yiddish
sdbesdiker losn, seen structurally, constitutes an exact analogue of Polish mazu-
rzenie as a fait accompli.61
Of graver importance is the matter of chronology in Polish. Despite recent
controversies on this point,62 even the skeptics seem to agree that mazurzenie
goes back at least to the fifteenth century, while authorities like Nitsch are con-
vinced that it existed in early medieval Polish. In any case, one might formulate
the following theory with regard to Yiddish:
Early Jewish immigrants, say, up to the fifteenth century, arrived in Poland
from western Germany, perhaps with only a weak distinction between sand the
equivalent of earlier sk (cf. §3.5). Under the influence of dialectal Polish mazu-
rzenie, any rudimentary opposition between hissing and hushing sounds collapsed,
giving rise to sdbesdiker losn. In subsequent migration, this dialect of Yiddish
was brought to Lithuania and Belorussia. 63 Meanwhile the Jewish population of
Poland was thoroughly replenished by fresh migration from Germany in the
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This time the new arrivals, coming
from Bavaria and Austria, 64 brought with them a vigorous opposition between
09 Of. Nitsch, op. cit., pp. 491f.; or Wenzel Vondrak, Vergleichende slavische Grammatik,

Gi:ittingen, 1906, I, pp. 374-7.

80 Of. Wiktor W~glarz, "Problem t. zw. mazurzenia w swietle fonologii," Slavia 15.517-24

(1937/8), pp. 517f.

61 The principal difference between mazurzenie and sdbesdiker losn is that, in the Polish

phenomenon, a new hushing phoneme, z (allophonically also [§) and [c): [p§ez) 'through',
[lly) 'three') has been formed from r (< rj). However, while in Polish the two developments
seem to have been structurally connected (see W~glarz, op. cit., p. 521f.), the Yiddish
z-less system could still have been produced by imitation of Polish, since no f existed in
Yiddish to give rise to a new z. Of. T. Gutman[s), "Tsum goyrl fun poylishn rz in yidish,"
Yidishe Filologye [Warsaw)!. 382-8 (1924).
61 Of. W. Taszycki, Dawnosc t. zw. mazurzenia w jgzyku polskim, Warsaw, 1948; and the

rebuttals by St. Rospond ("Ozy mazurzyli Malopolanie na przelomie XV /XVI wieku?"

J!jzyk polski 29.23-7 [1949)) and Kazimierz Nitsch ("Granice mazurzenia w swietle Polski
plemiennej," Biuletyn Polskiego towarzystwa jgzykoznawczego 10.159-63 [1950)).
63 "A more substantial growth of the Jewish population in Lithuania is evidenced only

about the middle of the fifteenth century, when ... Jews from Silesia, Little Poland,
and Mazowsze [areas of mazurzeniel) began to migrate to these parts" (Ignacy Schiper,
"Rozw6j ludnosci zydowskiej na ziemiach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej," in Zydzi w Polsce
odrodzonej, ed. Schiper et al., Warsaw, [1935), I, 21-36).
64 This supposition is bolstered by other linguistic evidence, such as the Bavarian-type

second person plural pronouns ets (nominative), enk (oblique), enker (possessive) in the
Yiddish of Poland.
&69
374 URIEL WEINREICH

the sand sseries. The Jewish communities were now larger, more compact, and
possibly more self-sufficient linguistically. Also, according to this hypothesis, in
Jewish contacts with the non-Jewish population the Slavic dialect with its
mazurzenie now yielded its place to Standard Polish, which is free of it. Thus, the
new wave was not affected by mazurzenie; the s ,...., s distinction was retained
in Yiddish, and two series of phonemes were bequeathed to the Jews of twen-
tieth-century Poland.
4.6. According to this construction, which is admittedly speculative until
early Yiddish texts from Poland are reexamined with reference to the problem
at hand, an early Jewish settlement in Poland was infected with mazurzenie,
while later waves of immigrants resisted it. According to the "Belorussian
hypothesis" discussed in §4.3, the Jewish settlement in Poland was not infected
with the s-8 confusion of the surrounding vernacular, but the Jews of south-
western Belorussia were so infected. 65 Whether one prefers the one version of the
Slavic explanation or the other, one is faced with the puzzling non-congruence
of the hissing-hushing confusion among the Jews and non-Jews of Eastern
Europe. To solve the paradox, history will have to be searched for characteristic
differences in the socio-cultural relations between Jews and non-Jews in various
areas or periods which might have led to different reactions to Slavic phonic
influences.

5. DISAPPEARANCE OF S.A.BESDIKER LOSN

6.1. The Ephraimites, according to the biblical passage quoted at the begin-
ning of the present essay, paid with their lives for their inability to distinguish
hissing and hushing phonemes in a crucial password. No litvak has ever been slain
for his sdbesdiker losn, but he has been the butt of innumerable jokes. 66 The
derision with which the feature was regarded by other Yiddish speakers sent
it reeling back under the impact of "general Yiddish" dialects from the south.
Map 2 shows the approximate deployment of the spreading hissing ,...., hushing
opposition in the late 1920s. In addition to dialectal pressure from the south,
there were other influences tending to introduce the opposition, as it were,
from within. There was, for example, the growing need to learn foreign lan-
guages in which hissing and hushing phonemes are distinguished, and the
promotion of Standard Yiddish by the schools, the theater, and political and
educational organizations. 67
Though the disappearance of sdbesdiker losn can be explained largely as an
"internal" Jewish process, rather than as a part of a general phonological de-
66 This differentiated reaction to coterritorial phonetics appears in keeping with the

varying treatment of sandhi in the two dialects of Yiddish (see §1.2). The loss of dis-
tinctive vowel length, at least in Belorussia, contrasted with its preservation in Poland,
also accords with the theory of greater receptivity of northeastern Yiddish to Slavic phonic
influence.
66 See Mark, op. cit., p. 437.
67 Ibid., p. 438.

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 "SABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 375

Map 2. DISAPPEARANCE OF SABESDIKER LOSN AROUND 193068

L 0 S N

In sabe8diker losn there is no opposition of hissing and hushing phonemes. Shaded areas
are in the process of establishing the opposition. !-hesitation in regard to 8 "'8; 2-hesita-
tion in regard to both 8 " ' 8 and c "'c; 3-opposition 8 " ' 8 established, but hesitation in
regard to c "'c; General Yiddish-full opposition of 8 "'8, c "'c, and z"' z. Dotted areas
indicate dialects possessing the hissing "' hushing opposition but showing traces of con-
fusion in former times. Heavy line represents approximate borders of Yiddish language
territory. Dotted line denotes Soviet-Polish and Soviet-Latvian frontier.

68 Borders of the Yiddish language territory are the outer limits of the pre-1914 Pale of
Settlement (cf. footnote 12). Isoglosses in the Soviet part of the area are according to
Vilenkin, op. cit., maps 66, 69, 71; in the Polish and Lithuanian parts of the region, they
are extended according to indications by Veynger, Yidishe dialektologye (see footnote 7),
p. 131. Traces of the confusion in the Suwalki area according to Mark, op. cit., p. 443.
Sources concerning Courland are cited in footnotes 75 and 77.

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376 URIEL WEINREICH

velopment in the East European area, this disappearance process, too, is not
without Slavic parallels. Compare the following statements:

YIDDISH BELORUSSIAN RussiAN

Before my own eyes, dur-
ing the brief period between
the two world wars, this
feature [of sabesdiker losn]
disappeared almost com-
pletely from the speech of
Lithuanian Jews. The
younger generation every-
where, except perhaps in the
smallest towns, was abso-
lutely free of [it].&&
The school plays a large
role .... Children of the sixth
and seventh grade at the
Yiddish school in Kopyl' do
not usually substitute s for
8 or c for c. 70
The disappearance of
cokanje and cokanje [i.e. c >
c], mostly in the speech of
the younger generation,
complicates the matter of
plotting the isoglosses of
this trait.n
The schools, too, help
considerably to obliterate
dialectal peculiarities . . . .
The Russification of East-
ern Belorussia and the
Polonization of the Western
part have perhaps been less
effective [in this respect]
than the Belorussification of
Soviet Belorussia. 71
One must remember that
cokanje, being a most notice-
able dialectal peculiarity
unsuited to the standard
language, has long ago
begun to disappear in the
dialects under its influence.
The process of disappear-
ance has been particularly
intensified by the impact of
the school, the press, the
radio, and also by the direct
impact of city speech.73

As a result of the disappearance process, not every Yiddish speaker from the
area under discussion manifests the confusion in his speech. The language
changed significantly in the last decades, and consequently emigrants who left
for America before 1914 are frequently more archaic in this respect than more
recent arrivals. 74
5.2. A particularly interesting problem is presented by the Yiddish of Cour-
land. Although it does distinguish hissing and hushing phonemes, their distri-
bution in many words deviates from that of general Yiddish. 75 From a study of
the deviations, one can conclude that Courland Yiddish previously confused the
two series, and that the opposition was established (or reestablished) only
comparatively recently. But while in the rest of northeastern Yiddish it was the
Standard Yiddish language, or the general Yiddish dialects of the south, that
served as a model for the introduction of the opposition, in Courland the model

&9 Mark, op. cit., p. 438.

70 Mordkhe Veynger, "Vegn yidishe dialektn," Tsaytshrift far yidisher geshikhte, ...
shprakh-visnshaft un etnografye 2.613-52 (1928), p. 615.
71 Buzuk, op. cit., pp. 41f.
72 Ibid., p. 1.

73 Avanesov, op. cit., p. 132.

74 In the collection described in footnote 9, contrast, for example, record P 76 (opposi-

tion) with P 64 (confusion).

76 E.g. kisn 'pillow', sejxl 'intelligence', zaleven 'to be stingy with', klace 'mare', etc.

See Max Weinreich, "Dos kurlender yidish," in his Shtaplen, Berlin, Wostok, 1923, pp.
204-4; Z. Kalmanovitsh, "Der yidisher dialekt in Kurland," Filologishe shriftn [fun Yivo]
1.161-88 (1926), pp. 167f.
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 "sABESDIKER LOSN" IN YIDDISH 377

seems to have been the variety of German spoken in the area. 76 The section
adjoining Courland on the northeast, around Jekabpils and Krustpils, followed
the development of Courland Yiddish. 77
Columbia University
76 Accordingly, where the distribution of hissing and hushing sounds differs in German

and in general Yiddish, Courland Yiddish agrees with German (e.g. German kisen 'pillow',
gen. Yid. ki8n, Courl. Yid. kisn). In cases where German offers no model, i.e. in words of
Semitic and Slavic origin, Courland Yiddish developed a unique pattern (cf. Weinreich,
"Dos kurlender yidish," pp. 202f.). The fact that, after the single sibilant series had been
split on the German model, Semitic elements ended up with universal 8, suggests that the
articulation of the old single series must have been more hushing than hissing. On the
other hand, the occurrence of c and z in words like cepen 'to touch', zcileven 'to be stingy
with' (general Yiddish cepen, Mleven) may be due to the fact that, because of the extremely
low functional yield or virtual absence of a c "' c and z "' i opposition in German, the old
single affricate and voiced fricative phonemes of Courland Yiddish were not split into c
and c, z and z, but were automatically converted to c and z, respectively.
77 B. Rivkin, "Di kurlender litvakes," Lite, ed. M. Sudarsky et al., New York, 1951, I,

407-16, p. 415.

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